You Can't Spell Island Without LSD
by stefanie bean
Summary: Hurley and Sawyer discover that squishing a harmless little tree frog leads to some trippy consequences. (Complete)
1. My Friend Dave

**(A/N:** _Set mostly during "One of Them,"_ _2x14._ _T_ _he Dendrobates auratus tree frog shown_ _in the episode_ _ha_ _s_ _skin secretions which can cause hallucinations._ **)**

 **Chapter 1: My Friend Dave**

It was Rose's idea to throw a big party and give away all the food in the Swan Hatch pantry, but she didn't mind one bit if Hugo took the credit. After all the jars, boxes, and cans had been distributed (or so everybody thought), after the beach camp castaways had bedded down by their fires, Hugo lifted a hammer and saw from a Hatch storeroom. He crept past an oblivious John Locke, too distracted by his own preoccupations with the station's whirring computers to notice Hugo sneaking out of the Hatch.

 _You sure don't need wood around here,_ Hugo thought as he sawed away. Bamboo grew everywhere, and it did just fine. He cut down one long straight pole after another, unable to slow down his racing thoughts.

Kate and Jack had disappeared right after the party. Maybe they'd stolen away to one of the rooms in the labyrinth-like Hatch, or maybe they were making love in the jungle. Not that Hugo blamed Jack. Kate was hot, even if Hugo didn't go for the _Natural Born Killers_ type himself.

Sayid was probably getting some loving tonight, too, but who knows. On her best days, Shannon acted like a beautiful grenade ready to go off in your face. Now nobody could keep track of her moods, not even Sayid. One moment they'd be all over each other, spurring people to grumble that they should get a room. The next moment Shannon would fight Sayid like a wild cat, then switch back to tender again.

Now Shannon was saying strange things, and seeing them as well.

Maybe he should tell Shannon that he'd seen a few things in his time too, but Hugo set that thought aside right away. Sure, he'd told Jack he'd been a psych patient, but doctors were supposed to keep that stuff secret, right? Shannon would tell the whole beach, though, and if that story got around, nobody would trust him with anything again. Anyway, Shannon thought he was a slob, that was obvious.

Not that she was wrong.

Hugo sighed as he carried his bamboo poles to a woodsy copse near the Swan Station's back door. The path was hard going, and Hugo stumbled more than once over fallen logs and loose rocks which shifted underfoot. A grinning crescent moon hung high in the sky as Hugo cobbled together some crude shelves. Tears came to his eyes, and not just from the occasional smack of a hammer.

The makeshift bamboo shelves were done. Now it was time to stock them.

Even his hammered fingers couldn't divert Hugo from the force which pushed him onward, leaving him almost powerless. The higher the crooked moon rose, the faster Hugo moved at his task, almost tripping as he toted cans and jars from the Swan pantry, weighed down by his backpack and his own compulsions.

A moment of clarity struck him. _This really sucks. Why the hell am I doing it?_

In the days following the plane crash, Hugo had been so ravenous that his teeth ached. He would have stuffed anything in his mouth: sedge grass, tree bark, unripe fruit. Even so, in the throes of near starvation, something had changed inside of him. Something was missing. At first he chalked it up to being genuinely hungry for the first time in his life.

But after his body had gotten used to the fish, the unusual tropical fruits, the eggs, the coconuts, his gnawing hunger had died down to mild nagging emptiness. A single dried octopus was delicious now. Enough was enough. The urge to mechanically eat until near-unconsciousness had disappeared.

Hugo wasn't a reflective man and didn't often put his thoughts into words. All he knew was that a low constant ache had vanished, one which you didn't know you had until it was gone.

After Locke blew open the Hatch with dynamite, the urge was back, if not quite in the same way. Before, Hugo had eaten openly, even when his mother yelled when whole boxes of cookies disappeared, or when he packed away a twenty-piece bucket of hot wings.

He placed jars and cans carefully on the bamboo shelves, arranging them just right. Other than finishing off a few Apollo bars, he hadn't even opened the ranch dressing or peanut butter. Simply knowing that the jars and cans rested in their jungle hiding place gave him a nauseating sense of excitement. The hiding brought more pleasure than the eating itself.

Hugo slid a few treats into his backpack, then slipped back into the Swan Station through the rear door. Now it was his turn to sit in front of the Hatch terminal and wait until the counter reached 108 minutes. Time to "play the numbers," as he put it to himself.

When the buzzer sounded, Hugo typed in the fatal sequence, fighting off the sick feeling of wrongness. Locke's glance might have traveled from Hugo to his backpack and back again, but Locke said nothing. So Hugo eventually drifted off to sleep in front of the computer terminal, exhausted from having traded the weight of his first burden for one heavier and even more strange.

* * *

Two weeks later the beach camp was in turmoil. Never a dull moment on Craphole Island, as poor Shannon would have put it. Only now she was dead. Then last night, Sawyer had managed to steal every weapon from the Hatch's entire armory, and no one could puzzle out how he'd pulled it off.

In the morning light, the beach camp huddled hushed and quiet. People whispered in small groups, darting glances over at Sawyer, dropping their eyes if he looked in their direction.

Hugo was sick with fear that Sawyer might lose his temper and shoot someone, the way Ana Lucia had shot Shannon. So he skirted well around Sawyer's shelter and headed for that part of the jungle where no one was supposed to go.

No one would follow him, because they were all afraid of the French chick.

Hugo wasn't. For one thing, Rousseau liked him. Not only had she given him a battery when he'd asked her for one, but also a long hug topped off with an awesome kiss. Sure, he'd tried to catch her eye a few times after that, and sure, she ignored him. That was the story of his life, wasn't it? Girls might make out with him behind closed doors, but stepping out with him to the Troubadour for a concert, that was another story.

Rousseau was hot, though. Too bad she was 31 flavors of crazy and a baby-napper besides.

In any case, it was easier to muse about Rousseau than listen to the inner fragment of sanity which insisted that something was wrong. Hugo pressed all his will down on that small spark of reason, trying to shut it up. Just like he'd done for the past two weeks.

From high in the canopy a couple of loud bird calls rang out. He'd first heard a bird like that on a trek to the Black Rock, before the smoke monster showed up and all hell broke loose.

Today it sounded like a whole flock of them. Up in the canopy they called out to one other in those long syllables which sounded just like his name.

As Hugo moved deeper into the jungle, the weird bird cries vanished into silence. In a shaded clearing Hugo plopped onto carpet-soft moss and unpacked his backpack. He stared at the cans and jars spread out all in a row, then compulsively opened and closed every tin, arranged the Apollo bars and chocolate cookies in a line, touched each pickle and olive jar. In pride of place he set a half-gallon tub of Dharma Ranch Dressing.

Overhead, tree limbs hung heavy with fruit, unpicked because not even Kate would stray this far from the beach. Maybe mango would slide down well with some of that ranch. He plunged one slice after another into the white, sticky mess, but mango made a poor substitute for chips, and the combo tasted pretty disgusting. He kept on eating anyway, relishing being alone, hating it at the same time.

In the forest, crouched over the foul-smelling jar of salad dressing, seized with weird compulsion and pleasure, something inside Hugo reassured him that he needed this. He was owed it. Hadn't he done so much for everyone over the past two months already? Think of it as payment. He was due.

He began to muse. In his mind's eye Claire sat next to him as she wrote in her blue leather-bound book, while Hugo soothed baby Aaron to the tune of the crashing sea. The silence between Claire and him wasn't one of those strained ones where no one knows what to say, but the peaceful kind where everything is in its proper place, and all the pieces fit.

Well, if Claire saw him at this moment, he could kiss that idea goodbye, because she wouldn't come within ten feet him, for sure. Look at what had happened when Charlie's heroin-tooting habit got displayed all over the beach. Now Claire wasn't even speaking to him.

"Liars," was what she'd shouted to Charlie. "I won't have any liars around my baby." Well, Hugo had to be the biggest, fattest liar of them all, didn't he?

Just as bad, Sun had almost caught Hugo resupplying his backpack from the secret shelves in the copse. Then again, what was she doing all alone in the woods herself, far from the beach? He'd offered her a candy bar, but she glared as if he'd handed her a rotten fish.

Hugo was glad Jin was back safe and sound, even if Hugo's nights weren't quiet anymore. Sun and Jin's tent sat right next to his own, and now it was full of small midnight cries and soft noises. Sun would gasp, then let out a drawn-out sigh, followed by Jin's louder, deeper conclusion. Each morning Sun would emerge from her tent and walk to the sea with long, liquid movements, her face glowing with love.

It was pure torment.

As if things couldn't get any more bizarre, a couple days ago he'd been doing laundry in the Hatch when that tall, lean Tailie named Libby had put on a purple sequined shirt right in front of him, and hadn't taken it off since. He tried to keep it light, but whatever he said to her always seemed to come out wrong or not good enough. Also, this weird familiarity surrounded her, like a lyric resting on the tip of your tongue, but you just couldn't place the song.

He was still puzzling it out when a familiar voice sneered directly into his left ear. "Women. Mooning over 'em's just a waste of time."

Hugo gave a little start. He had to be making it up, wasn't he?

Dave. From the mental hospital. Who Hugo had thought he had banished. But maybe not.

The voice went on, and now Hugo couldn't deny that it was Dave speaking clear as a bell, as if he sat close beside Hugo as they used to in the hospital.

"Take your buddy Sayid there," the voice went on. "What's love done for him? Dude almost went postal on you when you gave him Bernard's radio. The fights, the tears, the drama... Man, believe me, they're not worth it. Hump 'em and dump 'em, that's what I say."

Nobody was hiding nearby in the vacant jungle. Of course not. Hugo knew the drill, how it started. First you hear voices. Then you start talking back to them. And if you're really unlucky, the voices grow faces, bodies. Before you know it, you're stuck in your own private Idaho having energetic conversations with the walls.

He ate another mango slice and decided OK, he'd play along. What the hell. _"_ So, Dave, what happened to you getting out of Santa Rosa and banging hot chicks? Change your mind?"

"That's right, bro, hot chicks, not like the skanks around here—"

"Shut up," Hugo said, and amazingly, Dave did.

All at once, a tiny peeping sound piped up right in front of Hugo. He squinted into the dappled forest shadows as a small creature leaped across his field of view and landed on the log directly at his feet. The tiny frog chirruped again and fixed Hugo with an eye black as a jet bead.

Without thinking, Hugo reached out his laden hand towards the creature. "Hey, little buddy." White gluey sauce dripped from the mango chunk onto the log. The frog just chirped, ignoring the offering. "I guess you want flies or something. Sorry, little dude. You're gonna have to catch your own."

It was a pretty thing, green as an emerald with deep violet-black patterns across its head and back. Hugo's nightmare of compulsion slid away from the chirping piebald jewel as if repulsed by it. He saw himself in a cold, merciless light, hiding and ashamed, hand sticky with white residue.

What in the hell was wrong with him?

The frog chirped more frantically this time, then leaped onto an overhanging low branch. Another chirp or two, and he could almost swear the little thing wanted him to follow it.

Once more the frog cried out, shrill and insistent, and Hugo thought about clambering to his feet, but hesitated. If he went after it, he'd have to leave the food. There would be no time to gather it up and stuff it back into his pack. "Damn," said Hugo, stricken and unable to act. The frog darted away into the trees, peeping loudly as it dove deeper into that neck of the woods where none of them were supposed to go.

Might as well dip another piece of mango into Dharma ranch dressing, whose label read, "Fully hydrogenated. Shelf-life seven years without refrigeration." Hugo was so busy pondering what the hell was in it which made it keep that long, that he didn't even hear someone pushing through the bushes.

Things went from bad to worse. Over him loomed Sawyer, red-eyed and furious.

( _continued_ )


	2. It's Just a Boar, Sawyer

**Chapter 2: It's Just a Boar, Sawyer**

They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, but it tastes pretty sweet served hot off the buffet table, too. That's what occurred to Sawyer as he searched through thick jungle for the tree frog which had disturbed his sleep for the past few nights. Even though it was only mid-morning, the day promised to be a real scorcher.

In a woodsy clearing, Sawyer almost stumbled over Hugo, who was crouched like a troll over a jar of Dharma ranch dressing. _What an idiot, hiding food in the jungle,_ Sawyer thought _. Like nobody's never going to find out._

It sure would be fun to make the big dummy squirm. So Sawyer circled Hugo like a cat closing in for the kill and demanded to know whether he had seen that noisy bastard of a frog, because by God, if he caught it, he was going to kill that little son-of-a-bitch. Then at the sight of gooey white ranch dressing dripping off Hugo's hand, Sawyer burst into ragged, humorless laughter.

Man, the big guy was touchy about getting caught with all this food, hollering like a genuine head case. There was something so pathetic about Hugo, though, that Sawyer stopped his own rant. Appeal softened his perspiring, twisted face, and he started to plead. "Hurley, you gotta help me. I got no sleep for three days now, and my arm hurts like a vindictive bitch, even with Jack's pills. Look, goddamnit, I won't tell, if you just show me where that little cheeping son-of-a-bitch went. So I can get some sleep."

All at once Hugo relented, but he didn't look happy about it. So the two of them set off into the jungle.

Where the hell were they, anyway? Sawyer didn't recognize any of the surrounding forest. Kate was right when she said that he couldn't follow a trail even if it was laid out in front of him like an airport runway. He and Sasquatch were heading right into the peeper-creeper heart of darkness, but Sawyer was too mad to worry about finding his way back to the sand-filled shelter he called home.

As morning changed to noon-time and the air shimmered with sunlight, as the day grew hotter and the jungle thicker, the appeal in Sawyer's face faded. "Where the hell we going, Pork-pie?"

Hugo didn't answer him, just kept plowing through the jungle like a human tank.

There was that damn chirping again, loud as a Fourth of July one-frog ragtime band, and Hugo ran towards it. The jungle floor must've had it in for the big lummox, though, as it caught his oversized feet and catapulted him to the ground with an "Oof" and a mighty thud.

In a slow-motion miracle, the shiny green and black tree frog leapt right across Sawyer's field of vision. He reached for it, and damn if it didn't seem like the little bastard wanted to be caught. The tree frog wiggled as Sawyer's hand closed around it. Now Sawyer was going to get his own back.

Hugo pleaded for the tiny thing's life, but Sawyer wasn't having any of that happy horse crap. What the hell was he babbling about, a Mrs. Tree Frog and a turtle named Stuart? And how did he get to be such a mess? That's what happens when a man spends his life on the couch playing Donkey Kong, stuffing his face with cheese nachos.

Contempt dripped off Sawyer, foul as the Dharma ranch dressing which still clung to Hurley's fingers.

Killing the noisy little son-of-a-bitch wouldn't return Sawyer's lost sleep, or make his pounding headache go away. No doubt there were thousands more frogs where this one came from, but this particular one had the great bad luck to wind up caught in Sawyer's strong fist. It was frogger reckoning time. As Sawyer squished it, the tiny bones within the frog's body crunched, then collapsed.

Sawyer looked briefly at the broken corpse before handing it to Hugo. The frog's blood shone pale pink on Hugo's wide palm. Then Sawyer turned away and strode off into the jungle, not caring enough to look behind him. Dumbo would probably do something stupid like bury it. Give it a funeral. That would be just like him.

* * *

Stumbling through the jungle, Sawyer tried to find the path back to the beach. Sweat poured into his eyes and made everything swim together in a green-gold sea of vegetation. Man, it was hot out here. The temperature must have gone up twenty degrees since he'd first set out this morning to look for that damned frog.

Jungle air hung sluggish and thick under the green canopy. Sawyer wiped his forehead, not thinking about the sticky slime which coated his hand, and the scratches on his forehead suddenly stung, as if bitten by fire ants. "Son of a bitch," he muttered as he rubbed his hand on his pants leg. Then he tried to clean his forehead, but the stuff was like glue, and all he did was move it around. Some got into his eye, and that burned like a red bitch from hell.

Cursing a blue streak now, Sawyer stumbled about blindly in the waist-high grass, water streaming from his eye. All the places he'd touched with that stuff burned: the palm of his hand, his face, and especially his eye, which was now entirely blurred. He'd be damned if he'd head back to the beach and bleat to Jack for help, just so Jack could give him that blank doctor stare which didn't quite cover the dislike in his eyes. Screw that. He'd lie down for a spell out here in the shade of the jungle instead. How bad could a little frog goo be, right?

A few minutes later the nausea hit him. He rolled over just in time to avoid hurling onto his boots, and hadn't even covered the mess when another wave hit. He tried to lie down, but the bright sunbeams darted like spears through the treetops, stabbing his eyes. Maybe there was some more shade on up ahead. At least he wouldn't have to lie down near where he'd been sick.

When the jungle opened out into a clearing, Sawyer broke into a slow jog, trying desperately to get out of the sun. He cast one last defiant look back at the great glowing orb, set in a sky shot through with twisting, pulsing flares of purple and red. Just before the stabbing pain became too much to bear, Sawyer turned aside in horror. That blinding disk had stared back at him with the ferocity of everlasting judgment.

Man, what the hell was happening to him? Sawyer forged his way through thick curtains of creepers, grateful to hide in the shade, but why was there a big blue halo around each leaf? The pebbles at the path's edge seemed to vibrate. Goddamn, he could have sworn that some of them moved.

A few small brown rocks grew legs and began to crawl away. As the feathery leaves blew about, they left long trails of pure color behind them, the most intense blues, purples and greens that he had ever seen.

At least the nausea was gone. Sawyer pushed through an arch of branches hung with fragrant flowers into a shaded clearing, where he sunk to his knees.

On the other side of the clearing a few bushes rustled, and Sawyer half-hoped it was Hugo. He'd even apologize for the damn frog, if that'd make Dough Boy happy. Hugo was a soft touch, and it would be nice to have company on the walk back to the beach, now that he wasn't puking his guts out anymore.

Sawyer tried to pull himself to his feet, but something was wrong with the air, which rippled like clear jello embedded with glittery specks of trapped light. He pawed at the heavy jellied air, then he sat back down with a grunt.

Through the canopy poured a cascade of golden sun, what they called 'god-light' back home in Jasper, Alabama. The bushes rustled as loud as crackling paper. Every sound rang out crisper and more distinct, especially the swish of the wind-blown leaves.

Sawyer could swear the birds were laughing at him. A flock of little purple ones gathered on a tall bush, chattering and cackling. When they put their heads together, they looked like women gossiping, just like those stupid females back on the beach who always huddled together, yackity-yacking.

He picked up a stone to heave at the birds, then stopped in mid-motion. The blue veins on his hand stood out like tattoos, as if he had no skin at all. His grammar-school classroom used to have a model of The Visible Man, and that used to freak him out so bad as a kid, because all the muscles and organs shone red through the clear plastic shell. This was worse, though, as he could see his muscles move and the blood flow through his veins.

With a loud cry, Sawyer dropped the rock. Now he was scared, really scared. He pulled himself to his feet despite the weight of the air, and the jungle swayed like one of those cheap carnival rides in midsummer. You never could be sure if that bucket of bolts Tilt-a-Whirl was going to explode and send you hurtling to the ground below. But you got on anyway, because your girl would think you were a pussy if you didn't. Then you whirled around till you were sick. It was like that.

Down he went again, pushed by a surprise wind which rolled through the jungle like leafy thunder. Golden god-light surrounded him on all sides. He screwed his eyes shut against the brightness, when a riot of kaleidoscopic colors exploded behind his eyelids. The patterns swelled and ebbed in a delicate lace of pink, turquoise and the ever-present gold.

* * *

When Sawyer opened his eyes, he saw a little old woman squatting in front of him like a frog, naked from the waist up and wearing some kind of leafy green hula skirt. Long grey hair covered her shoulders, leaving her droopy breasts bare. He leaned back in surprise, falling on his backside.

Sawyer tried to clamber to his feet but failed. "Hey, Mrs. Yoda."

"Don't bother," she said. "You won't be able to get up. Not for awhile."

"What the hell?"

"What the hell yourself. Who do you think you are, anyway? Stupid _haole_."

Whatever that meant, it wasn't a compliment. He struggled to get control of his tongue. "You know, sweetheart, you could get a job posing for those vintage Playboy cartoons, the ones with the old lady, I mean. Don't you think you ought to put a top on?" All the same, his heart beat fast. She was about four and half feet tall from toe to crown, but she looked fierce. And mean.

When she held open her hand, there was that damned frog again, squished flat.

"So Jumbotron didn't bury it after all," Sawyer said.

"Sure, he did."

"Well, looks like you dug it up."

"Things can be in two places at once. But you are ignorant as crab spoor and don't know that."

"Hey, Bloody Mary, I didn't ask to get stuck on this damned island."

Her voice scratched like fingernails on stone. "To the damned, all things are damned."

"I don't have to listen to this. Just get the hell out of here and let me sleep it off." There was no way Sawyer was going to sleep, though. Things jumped out at him, way more alive and colorful than they ever ought to be. And he didn't dare close his eyes again.

A harsh screeching call from the jungle made Sawyer whirl around, and now his heart hammered against the wall of his chest. If he had thought things couldn't get any worse, he was wrong.

Something enormous crashed through the foliage, snapping twigs and leaves as it approached. Loud thumps echoed from gigantic hooves. It looked like a man riding a boar, but what a boar, almost the size of a small elephant.

In his confusion Sawyer said, "Hurley?" because at first glance the boar rider looked a bit like Hugo, only bigger and with more muscle. The man's long black hair fell in ringlets over his huge shoulders. Legs like tree-trunks gripped the boar's shaggy sides. But his face was the worst, because he looked like one crazy mother. If some guy sitting next to you at the bar flashed that insane grin, you'd turn right around and walk the hell out of there, hoping he didn't follow you into the parking lot.

The boar studied Sawyer with a knowing expression. It narrowed its piggy brown eyes and grunted out, "Hey, Sawyer. Long time no see. Get your tent all fixed up?"

 _I did not just hear that._

The huge man's voice boomed out, "Haumea, is this guy bothering you?"

The old woman didn't answer, just showed the crushed frog to the big fellow. He folded his arms over his gut and looked down at Sawyer with genuine regret. "Aw, man, why'd you have to go and do that?"

"Because he's a dumb-ass," the boar remarked.

Without waiting for an answer, the man said to Sawyer, "You married?"

"What?"

"Answer Kamapua'a," Haumea said in a voice just like Sawyer's Granny. You didn't mess with Granny when she got that tone, or you were likely to get the strap across your behind in two seconds flat.

"No, sir," and Sawyer drew the "sir" out with a long sneer. "I'm not."

Kamapua'a shook his great head and gave a heavy sigh. "If you were, you'd know what it's like to have a mother-in-law. Because, see, now you've pissed off my mother-in-law, and she's going to go complaining to my wife Pele. She gets Pele all riled up, then Pele tries to rile me up, and before you know it, I'm sleeping on the beach."

Unfolding his round arms, Kamapua'a climbed down from his mount. His white teeth flashed in his grinning wide mouth as he stuck his face right into Sawyer's. "And I'm not the kind of guy who likes to sleep on the beach, get it?"

"Got it, loud and clear." Sawyer's tone indicated that he didn't.

Graceful as a dancer, Kamapua'a squatted so low that his head was level with Sawyer's, and his belly almost brushed the ground. "Apologize."

"Hell, no. It was just a damn frog. You're worse than Hurley, getting all worked up about it."

Kamapua'a fixed Sawyer with a warning glare. "Let me tell you something. When Pele gets a wild hair up her honeypot to start a revolution in Hawai'i or something, I go along, because revolutions have the best parties, you know? See, me and Pele, we're modern. We can mix, and we know that you people are just butt-ignorant.

"Most times you're not even evil, 'cause you don't have what it takes to be evil. You're just stupid. Stupid and weak. But my mother-in-law here," and Kamapua'a waved a hand the size of a _tapas_ plate towards Haumea, "She's old-fashioned. She doesn't cut you people any slack."

"Sounds like she's right out of the Old Testament," Sawyer said. "A regular Mrs. Fire and Brimstone."

Kamapua'a smacked Sawyer playfully on the arm. Fortunately it wasn't the one with the healing bullet wound, but it still hurt like hell, and Sawyer fell over.

When Sawyer pulled himself upright, Kamapua'a's grin had gotten even wider. "Yeah, bro, it's like that. She's like that. So if I were you, I'd man up and say you're sorry. Since it's taken you so damn long, your apology better be real pretty, too."

Sawyer glared at the two of them. The wild colors were starting to fade, and the birds just put out ordinary chirping rather than gossip. That powerful headache was back as well. "Screw you," Sawyer said. "Screw you and your damn boar rodeo, too."

Haumea just sighed. "A life for a life." She opened her mouth and swallowed the frog like it was candy.

The boar shook its shaggy brown head from side to side. "You did it now, Sawyer. You're gonna be real sorry." Then it knelt down so that Kamapua'a could lift the old woman on board, before climbing up himself.

"You'll be OK in a few hours," Kamapua'a said to Sawyer. "And one more thing. No need to breathe a word about catching Hurley with that food stash in the jungle. I like that boy, so don't you go busting his balls."

Then, without so much as a backward glance, Kamapua'a, Haumea, and the boar trotted off into the jungle.

Sawyer sat there in a daze, before finally dozing off. When he woke up, the headache was mostly gone, and the jungle had returned to its normal shimmer of green and heat. He rubbed his eyes with his shirt, careful not to use his bare hand in case some of that poisonous glop remained.

It had to be a dream, because the alternative was too terrible to think about. What a dream, though, worse than what you get from drinking that home-brewed rotgut back at the old place, the kind laced with a little wood-alcohol or formaldehyde. Stuff that would really mess with your head.

It wasn't until he got to his feet to find his way back to the beach that he noticed the large and distinct pile of boar scat.

"Son of a bitch," Sawyer said.

( _continued_ )


	3. Hugo in the Sky with Diamonds

**Chapter 3: Hugo in the Sky with Diamonds**

Sawyer stomped off, leaving Hugo standing alone in the jungle. Purifying anger mounted in him like a column, pushed Dave to one side, then collapsed into despair.

Sawyer's cold grey eyes had sliced up and down Hugo's body like surgical instruments, tore through his damp, stained clothes to carve the flesh beneath, laying bare his massive shameful display.

If Sawyer told what he knew, Claire's small smiles would change to disgust. Sun's face would go blank and remote, and let's face it, it was no wonder Sun traipsed off into the forest with Michael, instead of with Hugo himself. After all, Michael wasn't fat, was he?

Libby, well, Libby would be kind. Her sweet professional tones reminded him of the Santa Rosa hospital nurses who could get you to calm down without calling in the muscle. At least Libby wouldn't laugh at him. Probably.

But none of it mattered because all Sawyer had to do was breathe a few words in the right ears, and everyone would know.

Hugo felt like crying.

He held the frog until the galvanic twitching stopped, ignoring the fiercely stinging cuts on his palm. Slowly he opened his hand, afraid at first to look, but there wasn't much mess. A little blood had seeped onto his palm, and the frog's black-bead eyes had gone blank and dull.

Since Sawyer was gone, Hugo did cry outright, and he set down the body in order to wipe his tears. That was a big mistake, because the burning frog slime which coated his face only made him cry harder. The poor dead creature not a moment earlier had been so full of life and energetic joy.

Sometimes in the shade of the jungle Hugo had come upon coupling frogs, clutching each other as if they would never let go. That's all this frog had wanted in its small life. It didn't have television, or concerts at the Troubadour. To be fair, it didn't worry about keeping a job. Or that it killed its _abuelito_ with a curse, either. Just a lot of flies, a few matings, then spawning and death, but this was one it didn't deserve.

From deep inside the Dave-chatter resumed. "Hey, man, better go check your stash. What if Sawyer took it? Run back and see, chop, chop."

Hugo screamed out the way the guys in the mental hospital did, "Just. Shut. Up!" Then, with a soft half-sob, "Shut up, shut up, omigod, I'm crazy, crazy, crazy, going crazy."

But crazy or not, he wasn't going to let the frog's body shrivel up in the hot afternoon sun.

* * *

Along the path Hugo found a spot where the earth was particularly soft. Setting the corpse down, he began to dig a hole with his big hands, but a wave of sickness almost knocked him over. Probably punishment for eating ranch dressing from _That Seventies Show_. Food poisoning could kill you dead as a plane crash.

The frog's body glowed with a pale purple light. As Hugo covered the frog with earth, rainbow-colored streaks like the tails of colorful comets followed his hands wherever they moved.

"Happy trails to yooouuu," Hugo half-sang, half-laughed. "Until we meet again—" All at once his heart pounded in his chest, but slowly, way more slowly than a heart should.

Panic seized him. Maybe this was the coronary his mother had always dreaded. As she never stopped reminding him, that's how your grandfathers both went, and you know it runs in families. Hugo's heart pulsed like some huge drum, and the dense green leaves echoed in perfect time with the beats.

Maybe he was wrong, though. Maybe it wasn't his heart which had slowed, but time itself. A few flies ambled along through the misty air, drawn by the smell of frog blood. Other bugs floated like tiny balloons caught in a light breeze, and pretty pink and blue streaks trailed behind them.

"Dude," Hugo whispered. Then he remembered to say the proper words. Touching the mound of earth with one dirt-smeared hand, he spoke in a slow, slurred voice, "Sorry, little buddy. Sorry that jackass killed you, and I couldn't stop him. I hope you find lots of bugs and a hot Mrs. Tree Frog."

It wasn't worth getting up. A fascinating kaleidoscopic movie spread out before his eyes, one where every leaf, creeper, and blade of grass glowed with life. Inside the leaves, tiny cells sucked in sunlight, grew, divided, and wove together to form a living jungle tapestry.

Then Hugo stopped breathing for a few seconds, because something rustled in the high tree-tops. All at once, great harsh shrieks rang out from the upper canopy, "Hurley, Hurley, Hurley." The bird circled in wide downward swoops, then landed right in the clearing where Hugo sat.

He'd never seen one up close before. It was large as an eagle, with emerald feathers edged in gold. Its scarlet feet ended in claws sharp enough to pierce the scuttling things which ran about the forest floor. Suddenly the bird spread its wings to full span and raised itself up into an almost-human stance.

Okay, now he'd sprung a main gasket for sure. The bird gave a few firm wing-shakes and its feathers fell off in one piece, like a woman letting a dress drop to the floor. The bird's eagle-beak softened into a pert, young face. Wings melted into round arms, and her long black hair barely covered her naked curves. The bird-girl's dark-olive skin glistened in the sunlight.

Hugo drank in the sight of her slim waist and swelling hips, the plump round breasts with nipples a shade darker than her face. When the bird-girl crept closer to him, he smiled and murmured, "Hey there, green chick."

She didn't smile back, though. In fact, she looked positively stressed, not chill at all. He could have ogled her all day long and into the next, but she wasn't having any of that. With wide gestures, she sputtered out an urgent cascade of squawks and trills mixed with rapid-fire syllables.

It was just as incomprehensible as when Sun and Jin fought in Korean. The bird-girl started making flapping motions with her hands, jumping about with agitation when he didn't get it.

Whatever sand got in her gears, it was busting them up pretty good, but given the view, he wasn't complaining. When her breasts almost bounced across his nose, he started to laugh. Annoyed, she shook him by the shoulders, which only drew more attention to her breasts.

"OK, OK, relax," Hugo said, and she stopped shaking him. "Man, are you ever gorgeous," didn't have the desired effect at all. She just threw up her hands in a universal gesture of frustration and despair. When the trees began to rustle, he ignored it, entranced as he was by the green girl.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught the thick, dark mist which filled the nearby tree-tops, then blew back and forth as if impatiently waiting for something. At the sight of the hovering shadow, the bird-girl grabbed her feather dress and bolted away into the jungle.

All at once the whispering began. It started out as a low hum, then grew louder until it formed into a kind of song, like a chant in church. Then the lights started.

It was as if a demented disco ball had just started flashing in the middle of the jungle. Closing his eyes did nothing to stop them, either, because pierced right through the lids and into his brain.

Even though Hugo had been a little sick to his stomach a few hours before, the lights made him want to hurl. Something rose from his very core, pulled by the crazy flashing lights. It was as if his mind wanted to vomit, rather than his stomach.

A column of dark smoke towered over him, and Hugo could have sworn it grinned at him, even though it had no face. Slowly the grin changed into a face which Hugo recognized: bald, jowly, thick-nosed and weak-chinned.

"Dave?" he said in a weak voice.

At once the dark vision disappeared, taking Dave's face with it. Now every leaf was ringed with pulsating halos which called to him in choleric yellows and urgent reds, acidic blues and rotting purples.

Each said the same thing in its own spectral language. _Run. Just run._

* * *

Hugo took the advice, tripping along the way, pulling himself up only to trip again. A few times he left his body as he had back in his hospital days, gazing down on his wobbling form with pity and contempt.

He found the way to his backpack and the spread-out food, where the jar of ranch dressing now played host to a party of ants. Every bug on the Island must have got the invitation, for they covered the white glop with a black, wriggling mass.

Hugo couldn't believe he had ever put that alien, repulsive mess in his mouth. Then the whole mass oozed its way out of the jar, advancing across the jungle floor towards his athletic shoes. There it stopped just short of the toes and sat there, quivering.

Terrified that the slime-like mass would form tentacles and leap up to grab his legs, Hugo backed up. On the second look, though, there was nothing but a tub of spoiled salad dressing and a few cans. He swept the whole mess into his back-pack and got the hell out of there.

Maybe he should have turned left when he should have veered right, or maybe it was the other way around. In any case, the path twisted away every time Hugo thought he'd gotten a foothold on it. Nothing looked familiar. Broad white flowers hung down from the low-hanging creepers, and in every flower winked a small human face. When he brushed them aside, they laughed at him with voices like small, tinkling bells.

The sounds of moving water echoed through the jungle. Hugo snaked his way through a lacy screen of branches, then stopped short, amazed. Protected within a shady grove, a spring bubbled over large, mossy stones.

If anyone from the beach camp had found this place, Hugo had never heard of it. The water murmured a quiet song as it tumbled out of the rock face. Garlands of ferns hung over the water's edge, and small breezes cast a refreshing mist over Hugo's red, sweating face.

It was an open invitation, and he took it. Everyone wanted turns in the Swan Station shower, and Hugo had managed to squeeze in a few himself. Most of the castaways stripped down and bathed in the ocean, but Hugo would have cut off his own head before doing that.

Here, though, it was private as a bathroom with a closed door, so Hugo undressed and stepped into the warm roiling water. High above, the trees rustled with bird wings, but when Hugo looked up, there was nothing.

The pool itself was long and wide enough for him to stretch out in. He plunged his head underwater, then lay back so that only his face and round belly-curve broke through the surface. All the sweat, the anxiety, the sorrow over the little frog, and the weird forest colors leached away. When he finally pulled himself out, the bees flew at their normal busy pace, and the flowers no longer had faces. Leaves glimmered gold, not uncanny purple in the sunlight.

A peaceful hush hung over everything, and the whole weird experience faded like a half-forgotten dream.

Hugo trudged back to the beach camp, not sure how he'd missed the path in the first place, because now it lay before him as clear as markings on a map. As he rounded the curved shoreline, he saw Libby running in his direction like her life depended on it. She slowed down when she saw him, and he gave her a shy smile.

"Hey," she said, pivoting towards the beach camp.

"Back at ya." In an act of rash bravery he added, "How 'bout if I, um, join you tomorrow? You know, for a run?"

She looked surprised at first, then collected herself. Her smile was as cool and measured as her voice. "Sure. I'd like that." She took off with the rhythmic, disciplined strides of a marathon runner and was soon way ahead of him.

Hugo trudged on through the sand, hoping everyone would be too busy preparing their evening meal and staying out of Sawyer's way to take much notice of him.

( _continued_ )


	4. Legion of One

**Chapter 4: Legion of One**

The castaways called him "the smoke monster," although the insane woman who had brained his mother with a rock had named him Samael. After the madwoman's years of lying, after she had killed everyone Samael had cared about, he had put an end to her. Good riddance, even if his dim-witted brother Jacob hadn't seen it that way. Still didn't.

Sometimes Samael agonized over what his brother had stolen from him. Other times it could be fun, in a degrading sort of way. This was one of those moments.

He hovered above the trees like a thundercloud, watching Hugo and Libby retreat. Sometimes Samael spied on pairs of castaways as they coupled in the forest, if only to evoke the long-distant memory of what human flesh beneath him felt like. With that fat fool it would be a waste of time, though. Samael suspected that no matter how patiently he waited, that lump of lard wouldn't wind up in the bushes with the lean woman anytime soon. Talk about watering a dry stick.

Never mind. Given what Samael had in mind for Hugo, women would be the least of his concerns. It was one thing for Samael to whisper in Hugo's ear; another entirely to create something that he could see. Concentrating as hard as he could, Samael pushed out a shimmering lump of ectoplasm onto the jungle floor.

He hated the process itself, even if the outcome was often amusing. It was perverse to have to split off a part of himself off like an amoeba. (He had learned that word from the French biologist whom he'd absorbed decades ago.) He couldn't just leave his extrusion to flop about like a beached jellyfish, either. He had to midwife it like the stillbirth it was, then animate it and give it form. There was no other way, if Samael wished to show himself in the guise of another.

On the jungle floor, the lump of etheric matter writhed and struggled. Samael let it dry out in the sun for awhile, then got down to business.

When the squirming mass had formed itself into a crude human shape of head, torso, and limbs, Samael said, "You owe me."

The mouth was always the part to form first. "For what?" the creature said, in the voice of Hugo's friend Dave.

"For creating you, you disgusting golem. Now listen up, I've got a job for you."

Dave had been born out of Samael's own essence, but formed from memories pulled from that clown Hugo's mind. The creature oozed into Dave's form: squat, bald, big-nosed, with a sneering expression. As soon as it became aware of its own body, it tried to launch itself into the air to fly, but instead landed on the ground with a thud.

Over the centuries, Samael had learned that the more he treated his projections as alive, the better they would represent the original. So he seized the Dave thing with an iron grip and slammed it up against a tree. "This is the deal. You already know what makes that fat, stupid fellow tick. Get Hugo to kill himself somehow, any way you like. Blow me off and I squish you like that pond peeper back there."

Dave cowered, then decided to try flattery. What did that say about Samael himself, that his creations first tried to escape, then groveled? Best not to speculate right now.

Cheeky as it was, Dave was one of his best simulacra. Its ectoplasm was barely dry, and already it was asserting its independence. Time for the carrot, instead of the stick. "You might even get her back," Samuel wheedled. "Elizabeth, isn't that her name? Learn a few new tricks, and perhaps you'll even hold her attention this time."

"Fat chance. She didn't marry me for my looks."

"Nonsense," Samael went on in an oily voice. "Your form is actually considered quite fetching these days, with that shiny pate and fine strong nose. Don't judge yourself by the limitations of one disgruntled woman."

Dave's disgusted snort sounded like a freight train whistle. "If you want him dead, go kill him yourself. Anyway, I kind of liked the dude. He was fun to hang with back at the hospital."

That was it. Samael couldn't take it anymore. He dealt his creation such a mighty blow that Dave flew apart.

Slowly the pieces pulled themselves back into Dave's form with long ectoplasmic shudders. Regretting his loss of temper, Samael said, "Don't be stupid. You know the rules."

"I do? What rules?"

Samael had almost slipped this time. If the creature suspected that it was simply congealed bits of Samael himself, it would fly apart like milkweed in the wind. The more it believed in its own existence, the better the outcome. Samael pulled his last remnant of control together and said, "You first met him in the madhouse, correct?"

Dave beamed, his expression smug. "He said I was the sanest guy in the place."

"I'm sure you were. That's why it shouldn't be too hard to talk him into killing himself. His sanity's already started to crumble. Tell him some outrageous lie, such as that he's sleep-walking and that jumping will make him wake up. Trick him into cliff-diving by showing him how it's done. You're an ingenious fellow and I have every confidence that you can lead that big dumb ox right to the slaughter. Just remember that by the time the moon goes dark, I want him gone."

Dave gave a mocking salute, then capered off into the jungle, the skirts of his plaid bathrobe flying.

* * *

The dusky green bird-girl named Rima crouched beneath the jungle understory, hiding until the smoke creature and its companion had gone. Soon she should be roosting, but she didn't want to run into either of them, especially after dark.

Clutching her feather mantle to her breast, she was about to resume her bird form, when from behind a thicket of coffee cherry bushes she heard a voice singing, harsh and a bit rusty.

Rima pushed through hanging creepers for a better look, then heaved a sigh of relief. In the middle of the clearing, a little old woman squatted by a small eucalyptus grove. Grey-haired but straight-backed, the old woman waved her hands over the ground, which seemed to move of its own accord at her touch. Before long she'd made a wide trench, five or six feet deep.

She lifted her ti-leaf skirt, making a loud sprinkle as she piddled onto the bare earth. Then the old woman leaned back as if pulling with all her might, and almost fell over onto her scrawny buttocks. Just as she was about to topple, a great gush of living water sprung up from the pissed-upon earth. She laughed, a crowing, raucous sound, and sat back on her haunches as water from the geyser filled the pit, making a bubbling pool.

Now that the old woman's work was done, Rima felt brave enough to venture forth. "Hail, Haumea."

The old woman nodded in greeting.

Rima asked, curious, "So, you're making a spring. What's this one for?"

"Come the next dark moon we're going to have company from that camp down by the beach, and they'll need water. Kamapua'a will send them boar, and the trees will swell with fruit. The birds' nests are full, and all these fallen trees have made the grubs fat and juicy."

"Enough to feed them all?" Rima said.

"There's a storm coming, and they'll be safe here. I care for my own, unlike some I know."

"You mean Jacob."

"Every year he grows more weary and longs for death. But what of your task, child?"

"I tried to tell Hugo, to warn him like you asked me to. But he couldn't understand me."

Haumea shrugged, as if it didn't matter.

"Samael..." Rima spit on the grass as she uttered his name. "Samael's made one of his _things_ again _,_ and now it's on the loose, lying in wait for Hugo _._ Oh, I know you charged me to watch over him, but I've muddled this hopelessly. It's going to try to trick Hugo into following it off a cliff, or to hurt himself some other way. And I don't know what to do."

Her last words came out in a long wail of distress. Other night-birds picked up the call, weaving it into their evening farewells.

The old woman rocked back and forth on her scrawny haunches and laughed from deep within her belly. In a scratchy voice she said, "Let it jump. In the last instant before it crashes into the surf, it will know that it was lied to, and its screams will ring in my ears. Kill it before it breeds, I say."

"Speaking of which," Rima put in. "The people who are coming to this new-made spring on the next dark moon... What's going to happen if one of them gets with child? What about your curse?

"What of it?"

"These human women on the beach, they don't deserve this."

Haumea gave Rima a stern look. "Child, twenty-seven years ago humans shed the Island's blood, and you know that blood is only satisfied by blood. But a new day fast approaches. Soon, very soon, the wound to the world's Heart will be healed, and the curse will lift."

Rima stopped to consider this for a moment, then said, "What about Hugo, and that thing out there?"

"The Island knows its own, Rima. Don't fear for him. Just watch over him. Love him."

"I do," she whispered. "Too much."

Haumea raised her wrinkled face, brow furrowed in warning. "He's not for you, child. You knew this from when I first picked you from your flock and gave you the gift of a woman's form."

"Sometimes it feels more like a curse."

"With a woman's body comes a woman's heart," Haumea said. "It can't be helped. But seven years' service you promised me. Afterwards you may take all the lovers you like, from Tahiti to Hawai'i, and on this Island, too, if any please you. Just not this one, darling. He's for someone else, if she'll have him."

"Seven years? Will it really take that long?"

"I hope not." Haumea draped Rima's green-gold feather-skin over the bird-girl's shoulders like a grandmother buttoning up a child's coat before sending her out to play. "And don't spy on him when he bathes. You're just making it worse for yourself."

Rima flushed the color of the jungle in deep shade, even as her face stretched out into a beak and became covered with feathers. When her bird form overcame her completely, she spread her wings and flew northwards towards her eyrie, followed by the rest of her flock.

A great boar trotted through the greenery, breaking bushes left and right. Haumea scrambled up onto its broad back, her work in the clearing done.

Some day, her daughter the Lady of Volcanoes would return to the Island. She would bathe her feet in liquid orange flame, and the mountainside would shake from her union with Kamapua'a, the wild Boar King. Then, at a great feast under the stars, the Lady would anoint the new Protector of the world's Heart, and on that night the mountains and the seas would rise up and be glad.

Long had the good creatures of the green wood waited. It was about time.

( _the end_ )


End file.
